Style: Toward Clarity and Grace

This book begins as if it were an anti-Strunk and White. Then Williams introduces terminology that at first glance obscures more than it illuminates. I’m glad I stuck with it, though. Williams’s aim is not to dictate rules, but to illustrate how to achieve clarity, cohesion, coherence, and other elements of graceful, readable prose.

By the time I reached the successive chapters on concision and length, I was convinced that this book offers valuable help I’d not found in other books on writing. I had never seen such good advice, for example, on constructing lengthy sentences that remain clear. These are particularly helpful in avoiding the monotone of invariable sentence length, and the chapter flowed logically to the next, on show more elegance. The book concludes with a common-sense discussion of usage.

Most books on writing are aimed at authors of imaginative prose. This book, by contrast, is aimed at those who write business reports, academic papers, or legal briefs. I wish I’d read it years ago. show less

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